IRAN PORTRAYS ITSELF AS VICTIM IN NUCLEAR SHOWDOWN

Country says it’s been target of clandestine assassination squads for more than 2 years

Facing international sanctions over its nuclear program, Iran is taking the position that it’s the victim, not the aggressor. Iran is pointing to the cases of five slain scientists whose deaths it blames on Israel and its allies.

From Iran’s view, it’s been the target of clandestine hit squads for more than two years while the West has ignored Iran’s claims that the Israeli Mossad spy agency is the mastermind.

“Iran’s official line is that it’s under siege, not the aggressor. This shows up everywhere in Iran’s policies and statements,” said Mustafa Alani, an analyst at the Gulf Research Center based in Geneva.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke on national television Wednesday next to photos of five nuclear scientists and researchers killed since 2010. Nearby was a large portrait of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei holding the son of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a senior director of Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility, who was killed last month after a magnetic bomb tore through his car in Tehran.

During earlier ceremonies to insert domestically made fuel rods at a Tehran research reactor, Ahmadinejad lifted to his knee the daughter of nuclear electronics expert Darioush Rezaeinejad, who was fatally shot last year by a pair of gunmen on motorcycles. Iran’s nuclear chief, Fereidoun Abbasi, embraced the girl.

The ribbon-cutting was done by the teenage son of slain nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari, who was killed in a November 2010 blast that also wounded Abbasi.

“What Iran unveiled was mostly for domestic consumption,” said Davood Hermidas Bavand, a prominent political commentator in Tehran. “Iran tries to tell its people that it has achieved its goals and that it has achieved proficiency in the nuclear fuel cycle technology” despite sanctions as well as attacks allegedly linked to Israel.

Israel has not directly commented on Iran’s allegations, yet officials have offered tantalizing hints that plots are always possible among Iran’s many opponents.

For its part, Iran has strongly denied any links to a series of violent incidents this week targeting Israeli diplomats abroad. But Iran’s sharp allegations about Israel’s role in the scientist slayings — as well as to cyber attacks targeting nuclear equipment — serve to strengthen speculation of a payback campaign directed by Tehran.